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Yes, I love studying. So I've just started on The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design's Module 4, having taken the previous 3 Modules last year and loved them. The e-courses are doing me a ton of good and, if anything, letting me know how much I have as yet to learn about art and design. It's the first week of ABSPD, and I've been sketching Things and Characters. Here's a bit of what I've come up with so far. I'm calling this first one "Cat Blobs" ...

I don't know about you lot, but I really want it on a print and, oddly enough, a tea towel - perhaps even a journal/notebook! The second one was just organic blobs really, and I'm not sure where it came from but quite liked it:

And this final one was an attempt to sketch birds. OK, it needs more work, but I can see a few there that can be improved on and used for something later, what do you think? Any favourites?

I'm not too sure of how that cat got in the bottom of the page, but it probably thought the birds just too good to resist. I'm off to sketch more today, let's see what pops up. Can you tell that I'm thoroughly enjoying this?

WIshing you a day full of pleasant surprises. Cheers.

Another exercise from my excellent e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design, that I struggled to complete. The class is really challenging me which I consider absolutely brilliant even if I don't live up to my own expectations. But I'm certainly learning tons.

Remember my Playful Geometrics Giftwrap Collection from a couple of posts ago? Well, not only have I created a mockup presentation for it, but added gift tags and a square greeting card. Of course, this is when my printer decided to play up and print out the most dreadful smudges ... I finally found a way to work around that  ... but I now have to learn more about gift-wrapping as, honestly, I've just hidden all the dreadful mistakes I've made! I'm not going to go anywhere near mentioning my lack of photographic skills. All now on my lengthy to do list.

Anyway, here are the results:

Here's the mockup page for the Gift Tags:

And here's the one for the Greeting Card:

Phew. I'm exhausted! Taking a tea break before getting back to work on my next piece. Cheers!

An exercise for my wonderful e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design - this was a difficult one for me, as I decided to challenge myself and not only stick to just geometric patterns this time, but also use colours I wouldn't normally use. It's taken me ages to complete, but I finally have some samples ready as well as the collection in two different colour combinations!

To begin, here are the sketches I doodled into my moleskine journal. Ignore that flower in the front, that was just for play. I didn't want the geometric patterns to look too rigid or formal, so I added a bit of quirkiness to them. There are whimsical warped circles, oddly shaped squares and rectangles, and slightly distorted plus signs scattered around everywhere. I wanted it to have slightly sophisticatedlook but with a dash of casual fun.

Most of the above rough ideas were scanned in and below are the end results. First, the Playful Geometrics Collection 1, based on the Pantone spring summer 2013 colours:

Next, a couple of the above on mockup giftwrap paper sheets:

Then, I (re)created the above patterns using the colours from my Peach Tulip Hues photograph (here's the image in case you're curious: Peach Tulip Hues) ... so here's the Playful Geometrics Collection 2:

And finally, a few of the sample giftwrap paper sheets from the above:

Having completed all that, I'm now no longer sure which colour combinations I prefer. I'm going to be using one of the above Collections to work on further, does anyone have a preference? I do like them both but may go with the second collection as the colours seem more spring/summery, what do you think?

Back to the drawing board! Have a sunny day, cheers.

An exercise for my brilliant e-course, The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design - having some fun with nail art. I hadn't realised how much intricate and crazy and lovely art there was out there for the ultra-manicured set, till I did a google search. I am now in a state of stupefied silence (typing doesn't count).

I had a try at playing with some nail designs myself, but they all seem pretty timid in comparison to what I've just seen. Still, this is about as wild as I'm willing to go for the moment ... here's a peek:

Nowadays, painting a coat of clear polish onto my nails is pretty much a huge event in my life, so anything more than one shade of any colour is pretty much beyond me. Hats off to those who adorn their fingers in such a gorgeous way, and if any of you have amazing designs to show off please do send me some pics, as I'd love to see them! I'm off now to give myself a much-needed manicure ... cheers.

I managed to get slightly carried away with my doodle (see previous post) ... I decided to use it in one of the exercises for my excellent e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design ... but ended up only completing part of the exercise as I got distracted playing with the various combinations that I could create from this particular pattern. So I'll post this here now and carry on experimenting and will come up with the rest of it later.

Here's what a couple of those patterns would look like on swimsuits ...

What do you think? This is all pretty new to me so I hope you'll bear with me if things aren't quite right or I make mistakes along the way ... I'm learning to pick myself up, dust the ongoing errors off and prepare myself for more of them! Cheers.

Original art © Mariana Musa

More creative exercises to play with. This time I picked up my black pen and scribbled unplanned 'marks' on a page, then decided they somewhat resembled leaves and so drew a whole lot of those, spacing them out in a grid. After which I sketched out their outlines, and finally, still exploring and playing (couldn't stop myself!), I added colour.

The original marks were made on paper but I scanned that and the outlines were worked on in Photoshop. I filled the colour in with marker pens on paper as well, and that too was then scanned in and finished up in Adobe Photoshop. Had tons of fun.

Now I just have to figure out what my next step might be ... Cheers!

Looking for inspiration in shapes I see around me. Circles. I took tons of photos but here are three of them.

After which I did a bit of an exercise with all that inspiration! Used the rose in the above photograph, got my pencils and pens out, and started playing ...

Quite enjoyed that. Have a lot of catching up to do this week, so there's long way to go as yet ... Cheers!